Neville Goddard Lectures: “He Has Put Eternity into the Mind of Man”

01 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “He Has Put Eternity into the Mind of Man”

2/4/64

Tonight’s thought is taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes, the 3rd chapter, 11th verse. This is considered the most disputed verse in the book. Man refuses to accept it because it doesn’t make sense and man is a rational being. But those who wrote the Bible, or took it down I should say, were not writing rational thoughts. They were inspired and they were writing their vision. This entire book does injury to man’s rational side, for to him everything is vanity, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. `No one knows who Qoheleth is, but he hints at it—and bear in mind this is a mystery—so the book opens with a certain claim, “The words of Qoheleth, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” The last chapter invites us all to leave everything and follow just the collected works of one shepherd, for the Bible tells us who that shepherd is. He is telling you who he is when he tells you “son of David,” but it’s a mystery, for in the scriptures there is no son of David whose name is Qoheleth. So in spite of certain scholars who try to say Solomon, there is no Solomon hinted in it.

But the verse that we are taking tonight, we have to go all over the Bible to support it. It is, “God has made everything beautiful in its time.” That is denied by our reason: a child comes in deformed, mentally retarded, injured and, here, “God has made everything beautiful in its time.” May I tell you, it’s a true story; it’s right in its time. Now we’ll go on, “God has put eternity into man’s mind yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” He’s put eternity in man’s mind. Well, again, man claims it can’t be done. To understand what he means by eternity we must understand the meaning of the word Olem, for that’s the word. Its interpretation can only be given if we know the real meaning of the word Olem. You pass a cemetery, Beth Olem (the same word Olem) and Beth means “a home, a house, one’s eternal home” when one goes through that cemetery. But he doesn’t mean that. The cemetery is earth. This world here is the cemetery called Beth Olem. He enters eternity here, that is, in his mind; everything here is in his Imagination, everything.

To understand it you must go back to the Hebraic mind who wrote it, who took it down. In Hebrew thought history consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into a whole. This concentrated time in which all the generations of man are fused and from which all things come is called eternity. Just think of it, a complete compression of every conceivable thing that man could ever do, all in just one compressed section of time. The Old Testament is that block. Every frightening thing in the world is openly described in the Bible. There isn’t a crime that you read about in the daily press, not a war, that isn’t openly described in the Bible. Talk about rubbing out a whole race, that’s described in the Bible; a whole country, that’s described in the Bible. And so, Blake made the statement: “Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy.” So here, in man’s mind are all the things that it takes for man to be anything in the world that he wants to be.

Now, he tells us there is nothing new under the sun. He makes the statement: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’ It has been already in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come later among those who will come after,” no remembrance whatsoever. Now he paints a word picture of what he himself has accomplished: great wealth. He amassed great wealth through his own toil and he knows he will die and leave it to one who did not toil for it. He says, “That is vanity of vanity.” He built great buildings and he knows that they will crumble or go into the hands of one who did not toil. He sought out wisdom and became the wisest of men, but the end was like the fool, both turned to dust. He mentions all these things and then concludes it’s all vanity.